January 10, 2016

Does it matter where our oil and other resources come from? Leif Wenar, author of the recent book Blood Oil, argues that Western democracies are compromising themselves by buying oil either directly or indirectly from tyrants with atrocious records on human rights. There is a strong case against these trade relationships, and, practically, they could be ended very swiftly.

August 05, 2015

Peter Singer famously argued that many of us are guilty of speciesism in our dealings with animals - we give unreasonable priority to humans over other the interests of other animals. Speciesism is like racism and other prejudices in many respects. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast, Shelly Kagan outlines and criticises Singer's arguments for this position, and in the process makes some interesting points about prejudice in general.

June 09, 2013

How should we live? This is a basic philosophical question, but at at time when human beings' actions are devastating the environment, we need to cultivate specific virtues, green virtues. Dale Jamieson outlines some of these virtues in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

October 13, 2012

How should we treat non-human animals? Is it enough not to cause them harm? In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Gary Francione argues that we need to go one step further than Jeremy Bentham did and abolish all use of animals. He calls his approach abolitionism.

July 28, 2012

Hate speech can be vile and psychologically damaging. Should it be tolerated? Rae Langton explores the nature of hate speech and the question of whether laws protecting free expression should allow it in conversation with Nigel Warburton.